He's a CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER and yet he's directed his Justice Department to ban civil cases against Justice Department lawyers like John Yoo, Bybee, and Addington from being held accountable for any crimes committed.

These crimes by these WAR CRIMINALS should have been prosecuted the minute Obama was in the White House. Instead he is protecting them, and is NOW an ASSESSORY to the Bush/Cheney war crimes.

According to Jonathan Turley a law professor who was on Keith Olberman's 12/09/09 program, Obama's lawyers are GUTTING NUREMBERG.

Lawyers and judges were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials.

We were afraid of a Republican getting into the White House, but Obama has turned out to be a Republican Lite.

I don't even know if the Republicans would have gone out of their way to protect Yoo and the other Justice Department lawyers, like Obama has. I feel very betrayed. We have a Bennedit Arnold in the White House.

He came across as this really nice guy, upstanding family man, intelligent, who would REVERSE ALL THE SIGNING STATEMENTS AND LAWS that Bush passed and return to the people all of our rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Our rights were TAKEN from us under Bush and they HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED by Obama.

The way things are looking, I don't think he has any intention of returning our country back prior to the 2000 election.

Obama doesn't seem to be on the same page as the people who elected him into office.

Do you ever feel like Obama is a puppet like Bush?

Does great speeches,and has cute family photo ops. I find it hard to enjoy the Obama's in the White House, with Michelle and all her clothes, when I KNOW her husband, our president, has PROTECTED WAR CRIMINIALS, AND HAS DENIED the citizens of the United States of their rights.

Not to mention ESCALATING a war that never should have been.

He HASN'T EVEN FOUGHT TO GET US HEALTH CARE!!!

He HASN'T FOUGHT TO GET OUR MONEY BACK FROM WALL STREET. His justice department looks like it even plans to continue prosecuting Don Sigelman, the ex-governor of Alabama( Karl Rove's friend and attorney general for Alabama prosecuted ONLY DEMOCRATS). In this case, Sigelman is innocent, a victim of a political witchunt. Close to one hundred attorney generals and lawyers have petitioned for his release. A total miscarriage of justice.

I am so sick of the people who get elected.

They DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE that they represent.

We need people in the White House and in Congress, prepared to FIGHT FOR THE LITTLE GUY.

I want NEW blood in Washington. Representative Alan Grayson, Denis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders CARE ABOUT US AND they're OUTSPOKEN.

Alan Grayson is fabulous and doesn't back down from the Republicans.

Senator Sanders made a presentation this week on the cost of prescription drugs in other countries and what we pay here in the states. He had charts showing the different drugs prices and how Americans are being GOUGED.

If we had 100 Senators like Bernie Sanders (Independent-VT) and All the Representatives like Grayson and Kucinich FIGHTING for US, this would be a great country.

These men should be in THE WHITE HOUSE. Unfortunately, the mainstream media really picks and chooses who shall run for president. We the people don't have a say, we're given who the media have chosen for us.

America is NOT the country I grew up in and was so proud of.

All great powers eventually start to decline and I think America is going down that road.

Between the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress, bankers and the corporate leaders in America, they have DESTROYED MY COUNTRY for their own personal ambitions and greed.

I always believed good over came evil, but right now I'm beginning to wonder if evil has taken over and the good guys aren't going to be rescued this time.

If that is the case, then this country will end up a third world country.

We the people need to take our country back from these self-serving individuals. We need to start marching and tell our law makers just who is paying the bills.

We need to DEMAND that they do what WE WANT, not what their lobbyist friends and country club pals want.

We NEED TO SEND OBAMA A STRONG MESSAGE, that he PROMISED US CHANGE and that WE EXPECT CHANGE.

Mr. President, You have a lot of nerve talking about justice and the use of "moral imagination". Well that Amicus brief in defense of John Yoo the right of advisors to escape the results of their own really bizarre "moral imagination" was not my idea of morality in any form. We must honor "agreements among nations of human rights" and still you allowed your justice department to excuse John Yoo after the Bush administration took him idea of "moral imagination" and used it to throw the Geneva Accords in the toilet and now your justice department has flushed the Accords into the sewer of your version of "moral imagination". You should be aware that the term, "moral imagination" is going to come back at you like acid reflux after chimichangas with hot sauce.

And there is another example of Obama's "moral imagination". You said we should be noticing our similarities and not majoring on our differences. Well, I noticed a similarity right after I puke on hearing about the Amicus brief. We can excuse, cover-up and justify abuses with the worst as well as our fine friends like China. Iran, North Korea, China, Pakistan, the Bush administration and all the others can excuse anything in time of war and so can you. There were several guys at Nuremberg used that, "I was just an advisor and didn't think they would really do it" defense and it didn't work in 1945 and it should work now.

You said we should "fight oppression and strive for justice", right, and the way to start is by allowing actual abusers, torturers and sadistic jailers to escape retrobution by saying that they were taking the advice of the Bush administration and the administration gets to say they were taking the advice of their advisor, John Yoo, and all advisors to leadership are exempt from any form of punishment whether criminal or civil. I was listening to the speech on NPR and I just heard an expert on something other than basic decency say it was a powerful and "self-effacing" speech. As my old man would say, "horse hockey".

That was the most artful and articulate effort at butt-covering, past and pre-emptive I have ever heard. The Bush speechwriters are loving the content and Bush is jealous of the delivery, but I am having to resist the urge to barf on my keyboard.

John "Bonehead" Boehner -- that's what's disgusting. So we're not paying down his war debt fast enough to please him? How do you feel about gagging him with spoon? We hear almost everyday about their great success story in Iraq. First the senate won't do anything about the TB2F banks, or the regulators, or the auditing companies - all while Americans suffer in a prolonged economic crisis that needn't have been - except for the philandering, self-serving hypocrites in the United States sinnit. These republican cynators don't want to invest in anything with a net worth less than a trillion dollars. These merging, surging, problem circling sorry bastards are convinced that Americans and America aren't worth investing a dime of our own tax money in. Americans don't have anyone in the cynate representing them - and they should know - they have a clientele not a constituency.

I like President Obama better when he's in a grim mood, like he was this morning. Yes he can feel our pain. So the big banks have successfully gouged enough money out of their customers to repay some of the TARP money. Have these jerks never heard of penalties and interest? In their fine line of risk free business they don't feel they even have to read the fine print in their own dealings with the likes of Dubai World. An implicit understanding is good enough when you can turn around and sock it to American taxpayers. They've got the goose that lays golden eggs, Tim Geithner and the United States Treasury Department. The debt that was the banks' has just been shifted over to the FDIC - and guess who comes up winning? That's right Goldman Sachs, J.P Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Competition? Who needs competition? You want some money - you've got to come begging to us - and you'd better have two arms and two legs - we're not big on doing repeat business with a bunch of losers.

Why can't President Obama even say the word Israel anymore? Israel's foreign minister, Hilary Clinton, will talk all day about the menace of Iran's secret nuclear weapons program. What about Israel's secret nuclear weapons program? She can't talk about that because it's umm, ahh, errh - well it's secret don't you know. The only country in the ME that's actually expanding outside their borders, sending people packing who were born Jerusalem, whose parents and grandparents were born in Jerusalem. Get the hell out - we're taking your land. Is it any wonder that the "terrorists" are fighting us tooth and nail? We can take the I405 route all day long but it won't get us any closer to solving the problem. Neocon fantasies are still neocon fantasies - and they will never give up until every last "troop" has bled their last drop. We need to send more troops, we more tax cuts for the rich. We need to surge like we did in Iraq. Since Dick Cheney is so hungry for a microphone he should get one shoved down his gullet until it shorts his battery out. We don't need to hear any more from the point man for creating the problem in the first place.

The MSM, busy kerning themselves into an em space, would have us believe that the jobs numbers are "encouraging". Since when are a few jobs not created in the month long buildup to Xmas. Are people going to get to wear their Santa suits until summer? I don't think so. What happened to the 37 people busted for corruption in NJ? They could be taking their seats in the Knesset by now and we'd never know. We're not allowed to know. Israel has a bigger army of spies in this country than they do in their own military. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of "troops" that they've lost in the "war on terror". They've been very successful in getting the kids off the streets of America's ghettos to die in their place - all the while pushing the boundaries of their sorry assed little country deeper into land that doesn't and has never belonged to them. They won't a "holy" war - then they should have to fight it themselves - not rely on the blood and treasure of this country to do it for them. They don't and won't because they know they'd get their asses kicked. We're going to get our kicked as well if we continue to insist on taking the I-405 route to solving our problems. L'Enfant would be proud - Abraham Lincoln would be having canned generals for dinner at the WH.

The UN gave Israel the charter for their country. If they can't get back in it and stay there - then that charter should be revoked by that same body. Of course that's not likely to happen as long as "Christians" are busy devouring the "body" of Christ, drinking the "blood" of Christ and eschewing the teachings of Christ. The republican exegesis of the Bible has reduced it to ten commandments in the charter of the RNC - all of them about tax cuts for the rich. At least I don't see that happening in the Muslim world. Even the Koran acknowledges Jesus as a prophet of God - even the divinity of Mary, his mother. Couldn't we at least do as much? If Jesus were alive today he'd be overturning some tables in the temple of Goldman Sachs. Likely as not he'd have time for just one Last Super before being back on the cross again.

I admit I'm sounding like a broken record lately, but I was disappointed to see on the news this morning that people were lined up once again all night in Sioux City, Iowa at a Barnes and Noble store waiting for their moment with the Divine Sarah Palin. Some more info from her visit last week - locals interviewed who saw her were enraptured with her and claimed she was a fine representative of their values and world outlook. Of course there were many more who thought the whole thing is a ridiculous circus as gullible GOP morons who never question their leaders gather to feed from the trough of hate and supposed Christian superiority. Still, the number of people who are falling at this woman's feet is alarming. I read the post of an evangelical group in Utah that supposedly can convert homosexuals to straights through "therapy" that basically hammers home their own belief system, minus any real understanding of the gay lifestyle, and involved very bizarre exercises like pretending to brutalize one another with baseball bats to recreate supposed terrifying moments in the students' pasts. I view this unnecessary reliving of a horrible time for many abused people as a thinly veiled fascination and repressed urge on the part of the so-called counselors to delve into homosexual territory themselves.

In fact, it seems the evangelical crowd is becoming more invasive toward the gay and lesbian community, totally ignoring the megachurch industry that is raking in millions from gullible people trying to buy eternal life, ferociously defensive about guns, and extremely pro-war, especially in the Promised Land. Palin, I fear, is one of those powerful evangelical zealots who, if they can get away with it, would make participation in the Christian faith compulsory. These people consider anyone who doesn't share their exact belief systems as either "lost" in dire need of "saving", where they can become totally "free in Jesus", which makes no sense whatsoever when one considers the blindfold one must wear to be a good "Christian" - i.e., Creationist, anti-science and totally compliant in the rituals they have bestowed upon themselves over the millenia, or the "enemy", Satan and his army, trying to wipe them out. Those who haven't heard the "good news", and I'd like to find someone who hasn't, thanks to society allowing these people access to everybody and basically kissing their holy asses in order not to offend. And they think nothing of taking their "message" to Muslim and Buddhist countries where converts will face torture and death, and call them "martyrs".

I know of a few people here in the Bible Belt who have stated they have no qualms about forcing a Holy War upon the Middle East, and probably anywhere else, in order to make everybody "Christian" for their own supposed good. You see, it's all out of love and eternal salvation these people want to wage a genocidal campaign in places like Israel and Iran, while they sit back in the US and let somebody else's kid die for it. The three most radical evangelicals I know never served in the military, nor have their children. Two dodged the draft with student deferments; the other was young enough not to be in a draft, but chose not to enlist. Nobody cheers louder when our soldiers die pointless deaths than these cowards. They of course "support the soldiers", but that's a hollow statement when the military shouldn't even be in Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place. How about that for pro-life? Seems the only time fighting for life is for newborns, while senseless slaughter for adults is no biggie. I say senseless death is senseless death, regardless of age. We have to give the religious right their freedom of speech and right to practice their faith, to be sure.

We cannot allow these people to convert anybody at the end of a gun barrel or threat of prison, which is a closer threat than most people realize when you understand just how mindless these people are and how willing they are to follow the leaders right off the cliff. Alarmist? If Mike Huckabee and or Palin become front-runners for the GOP in 2012, remember this letter and tell me then how close we've come to a theocracy. Better use that 1st Amendment and demand your freedom FROM religion while you can.

I rather like the idea of a war tax on high incomes; if we're really going to prosecute the war in Afghanistan, we'll need to fund it, and who better to do that than people who have most of the money, especially since they are not, for the most part, in the military themselves, nor are their kids.

An even better idea would be war bonds. It worked in WWII. "But," I hear you cry, "nobody would buy bonds for Afghanistan." Of COURSE they wouldn't, which is a good indication of what we should do there: Bring everybody home and have done with it!

Oh, rapture! Fayetteville has been blessed (or cursed) with a visit from the Divine Sarah Palin on her book signing tour. Good thing it was at a Sam's store where her admirers, and there's plenty around here right down to the eyeglasses and hairdo, don't feel out of their element by being caught in a bookstore. Our local news hasn't broadcast at the time I write this so I don't know just how big the crowd will be and I will not patronize that mental case by watching it tonight either. I have heard though that many people were camped out in temperatures in the teens overnight and over in Oklahoma, where I suppose we should expect this kind of behavior, in Oklahoma City or Tulsa, I don't know which city was the next stop later today, Palin fans were already camping out yesterday afternoon for a glimpse of their hero. She is a huge hit with the Bible Belt, who share her Armageddonist point of view, and to the point of fervor. These are people who will support anybody who would be willing to force the "end times" if for no other reason than to prove themselves right.

Believers around here are cult-like in their mentality and it's a frightening thing to see. Not every church goer is like that - there are some reasonable folks out there - but the majority here are zealots without backbones for the most part. Eager to force their religion up your nose, but preferably standing behind somebody else because they're also programmed to follow and not question their preachers, a radical like Palin is a modern day savior to them. Beware this woman. There are enough stupid mindless people out there who could make her a real power figure and a serious contender for the White House. This groupie mentality that's following her around the country is not good. I fear the 1st Amendment, particularly freedom of religion, which also guarantees freedom from religion, despite how right wing wackos interpret it, could be in serious trouble if more sensible people don't rally to keep this loony tune out of elected office.

I don't think Washington's Governor knows our Huck very well. In the years he was Governor here, I doubt if he has ever regretted anything other than missed opportunities to loot the taxpayers or attack the Clintons and Democrats.

The economy is in a mess, courtesy of Bush. Our infrastructure is falling apart. People are UNEMPLOYED, in case Obama hasn't heard.

The American people NEED AND WANT HEALTH CARE REFORM NOW. Not in 2013 or 2016 but NOW. We want UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, or MEDICARE FOR ALL. The government under Bush GAVE OUR MONEY AWAY to the banks.

If you or I were trying to get a loan, we'd be jumping through hoops and if there was just one questionable thing on our application it would be DENIED.

Yet the American government GAVE Billions to Wall Street with NO questions asked, NO accountability, and they were the incompetents who put us in this mess.

Our trade is to the advantage of everyone but us.

America is in DEBT and we need to be put on a budget.

War is a BUDGET LEAK. We can't afford it. I'm hoping that all members of Congress REFUSE to finance this war.

One million dollars a year, to fund each soldier,is money that could be put to much better use FOR US here at home.

Under Bush and Cheney the American government was robbed in broad daylight. Non competitive bids for contractors, contracts to Blackwater(Xi), loosing billions of dollars(in cash) that were FLOWN into Iraq and it just DISAPPEARED, with no accountability.

We are in deep debt, so how can we SPEND more money on a war that has no end? Sounds like 1984, war keeps the people happy and content, even with a poor economy at home. People don't mine sacrificing for the war cause.

I personally am tired of helping to build or rebuild someone else's country. I'd like to see a little of my hard earned money spent at home on US and OUR country.

You want to protect people,how about protecting our own people. Send the troops into our inner cities and rid them of the gangs, so the people living in those poor areas are safe. You want to rebuild cities devastated by war, come to any inner city in America and rebuild the destruction that gangs and just neglect of a neighborhood have on a community.

Obama wants to secure his reelection as a WAR PRESIDENT, than let him declare war on the gangs and drugs that have taken over our cities. Our gangs, which number thousands are a more dangerous threat to us, than the Taliban is to our country.

All you have to do, is look at all the people whose lives have been destroyed by gun violence, drugs, lack of hope, who see no future in this country. We don't have to go thousands of miles away, to help bring democracy to a country. We need to provide democracy and opportunities for AMERICANS. That's the war Obama should be fighting, not one in Afghanistan.

I DO NOT WANT TO SEE ONE RED CENT OF OUR MONEY, SPENT ON WAR. Call Congress and tell them not to FUND this war or any other war. 1-800-828-0498

I like to call it The Audacity of GOP Self-Interest or The Audacity of Hopelessness, or Your Health IS'NT "Terribly Important" to the GOP. I have no idea who was asking the questions, but Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) had an answer:

"The war is terribly important, jobs and our economy are terribly important. This may be an audacious suggestion; I would suggest we put aside the health care debate until next year the same as we did with cap and trade and climate change and talk now about the essentials, the war and money."

It makes those "death panels" irrelevant, The Congressional GOP Caucus has decided they have their own government run health plan. They have decided that prolonging this war and lining the pockets of Big Pharma, Big Health Insurance and keeping costs higher than a cat's back are more important than whether you, your children or you old granny lives of dies. They will just let you die and not only that, they will allow the Health Industry to bankrupt you and your grandchildren's futures in the process.

The GOP puts your health right up there with "cap and trade" and "climate change," the first they would like to take Lugar's luger to and the other they think doesn't exist. If they really cared about jobs, they wouldn't have made it so easy for all the jobs to go overseas. There has been a concerted effort on the part of the GOP to send the workers overseas too, but you have to get shot at in the War to End All Health Care Reform.

The terribly important essentials, "war and money" supersede your need to have what Congress has, a choice on health care. They want to prevent you from opting out of your Simon Legree Health Plan that literally costs an arm, a leg, and your future, by making it mandatory that you choose a plan someone is guaranteed to make huge amounts of money from. And they get to fine you if you don't choose one.

Now is the time for all good GOPers to come to the aid of their contributors. The same people who were trusted with regulating their own activities and sunk the economy with all hands escaping and leaving the rest of us to drown is helping the GOP write the Health Care Reform death certificate.

It isn't "united we stand, divided we fall" it is "stand with United, divide the spoils."